This week’s mod interview is with Micky Lundell, better known as Buddah within the BSG forums. Buddah lives in the small town of Weber, Minnesota. There he works for Qwest Communications, where his job responsibilities relate to POTS (plain old telephone service) and PANS (pretty amazing new stuff).

Buddah is a long-standing fan of The Elder Scrolls series, who has taken it upon himself to maintain an extensive collection of Elder Scrolls mods. After learning this, I imagined his computer as the storage area where the Ark of the Covenant goes at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Of course, that would mean he’d never be able to find any of the stuff that he stores, so I guess my analogy fails…

After a long summer hiatus, Inside the Vault is back with artist, Rafael Vargas.

What’s your job at Bethesda?
I get to do what I love the most, which is building and designing environments. In my previous work experience, as well as much of my free time, I am devoted to creating spaces and architecture. So I guess that makes me by now a World Artist.Continue reading full article ›

Above is the latest edition of Game Trailers’ Music in Gaming series. This week’s discussion focuses primarily on distribution of music on gaming platforms — with Fallout 3 composer, Inon Zur, sharing his opinions on the matter. Next Sunday, the final segment on this series will air, with the panel discussing the future of composition in games — should be interesting to hear Inon’s thoughts on that.

Elsewhere, there’s a new press coverage out of Europe to check out. At Gamers Universe, there’s a lengthy video interview with Pete where he sounds off on topics ranging from VATs to DLC discussion. New interviews can also be found at Bit-Tech, GamersGlobal, and Guardian.co.uk. From the latter, here’s a snippet of Pete discussing pacifism in Fallout 3:

Can you tag Medicine, Repair and Barter, and focusing on those skills, still be able to complete the game?

Pete: Sure. We recently had someone play through the game and finish it while only killing one thing very early in the game…a Radroach. I’m not saying I recommend everyone run out and try to play the game as a pacifist, but if you want to give it a try, it has been done.

The 29th Olympic Games kicks off today in Beijing. There’s sure to be plenty of folks from the office following the action, but when I think of “let the games begin,” I’m thinking about the games we’ll all be playing this weekend (looks like Braid is a popular pick this week).

Here’s what we’re playing this weekend. Let us know what you’ll be playing, and what games you think should have their own Olympic events?

Nate Purkeypile: TF2, The Witcher and best of all, Boom Blox.

Joel Burgess: Civ IV, now that Civ DS got me hankering for the full monty. Also doing the wii fit thing. Yoga’s tough! Also planning to roll up a new magic-user in Arcanum.

When we launched Bethblog over a year ago, we shared some Fallout-themed cars created in Forza 2 by Tim Lamb and Gavin Carter. Those were cool, but how would it look on a real car? This week I received from photos from Ilyas, a Fallout fan from Moscow, who detailed his 2002 VW — transforming it into the “Fallout Car.”

If you’re looking for new Fallout 3 previews and interviews, there’s plenty to check out.

First, the above is the cover for the August issue of Peelaja-magazine (Finland) which just recently made its way to newsstands. If you’re over in Finland, be sure to check it out.

There’s quite a few new interviews with Pete stemming from his busy trip to Europe last week. Crispy Gamer has a five-page interview conducted by Paul Semel. Here’s a sample:

Crispy Gamer: Over time, your guns in the game will wear out and ultimately become less accurate. First off, how quickly will that happen? Am I going to have to buy a new gun after every battle?

Hines: All weapons in the game degrade over time. Many are beat up when you first find them. You either have to repair them yourself using your Repair skill, or find people who can repair it for you. It’s not an immediate thing, but as you use a weapon you can see it start to degrade at what feels like the right level. So you have to find more of that weapon to repair it yourself, or pay someone to do it. If you have to do it after every battle, you’re probably wasting a lot of ammo and are a terrible shot. It doesn’t happen that fast.

Just wanted to give a shout out to the folks over at The Vault — a wiki page dedicated to all things Fallout. In the past week, the site hit a new milestone — 3,350 articles (and counting).

If you haven’t visited the wiki, you can learn quite a bit about the Fallout series. Wanna know about ALL the vaults? Head here. How about the timeline for the games? They’ve got that too. The site is definitely a useful resource — even folks here at the office have used it.

A day after the NFL announced it’s latest Hall of Fame inductees, Planet Elder Scrolls posted the latest Hall of Fame entries for Morrowind and Oblivion mod projects. Congrats are in order for the following:

Morrowind Mods

Clean Hunters rifle by Phijama: A challenging, yet fulfilling mod for Phijama to complete, this mod brings two rifles and a revolver to Oblivion.